Cohn and Wolfe Ltd

Cohn and Wolfe - a subsidiary of WPP - describes itself as a "strategic marketing public relations firm dedicated to creating, building and protecting the world's most prolific brands."[1] It has offices all over the world including UK, US, throughout Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and the Asia Pacific region.

The firm claims to be an agency for the 'new communications landscape'. It is a global public relations agency with 50 offices in major markets around the world. They 'offer a powerful combination of breakthrough, brand-building creativity and pioneering digital and social media strategies.' [2]

Healthcare

Cohn and Wolfe recognise that Healthcare PR is changing and encourage clients to search for new models in communicating effectively to healthcare professionals, consumers and payors. The agency in turn creates 'bold creative strategies' with a focus on providing consumers with more information to take more active roles in their healthcare. According to C & W: 'As public relations professionals, it's our job to really understand the conversations happening among our clients' customers, patients, physicians, policy makers, and payors. Much of today's conversation is happening in social media channels, and this is true for healthcare.'[4] The agency claims to be an expert in working in the complex environment where healthcare providers, patients, caregivers, advocacy groups and manufacturers engage in digital communications channels like social communities, blogs, and various audio/video sites.

Dabbling with fake blogging

Fake blogs - a form of viral marketing in which PR or advertising agencies attempt to generate interest in their client's product by creating a fictional character on the internet - are drawing criticism from real bloggers. Cohn & Wolfe apologized in 2005 after "using a fictional character to leave a series of thinly veiled advertisements on blogs and other websites. A number of websites were hit last week with messages from Barry Scott," a fictional spokesman for a British household cleaning product.

British blogger Tom Coates was especially outraged and called it "a new low for marketers" after he wrote an emotional account of his relationship with his father, and then received comment spam from "Barry Scott" disguised as condolences. Coates replied: "My view was that any right-thinking person would view trying to market your product on such a post as revolting, corrupt, cynical, disgusting, sick and dishonourable."[5][6][7]

Ghost-written journal articles

Cohn & Wolfe was at the centre of a scandal in which Eli Lilly (a Cohn & Wolfe client) officials ghost-wrote studies for medical journals. The articles plugged an Eli Lilly drug, the antipsychotic Zyprexa, and were published under the names of credentialed scientists.[8]

Zyprexa is controversial because it is administered by internal injection and is sometimes given forcibly to psychiatric patients. It is also controversial because of its severe listed side-effects, which can include diabetes and tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movements of the mouth, tongue, jaw, or eyelids). The latter side-effect is in some cases irreversible.[9]

In spite of these drawbacks, Lilly sought to make Zyprexa “the number one selling psychotropic in history,” Bloomberg.com reports. In order to make the drug attain its "sales goal", Eli Lilly hired ghost-writers to prepare the articles for publication in medical journals. Documents unsealed as a result of a lawsuit against Eli Lilly for overpricing its drugs reveal that Cohn & Wolfe played a PR role in this process.

Bloomberg.com reports:

“The paper for the Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry supplement has been completed and sent to the journal for peer review,” Kerrie Mitchell, an employee of the public relations agency Cohn & Wolfe, wrote in a Feb. 23, 2001, e-mail to Michael Sale, a Lilly marketing official. The message was among the unsealed files.

“We ‘ghost’ wrote this article and then worked with author Dr. Haddad to work up the final copy,” Mitchell said in the e- mail. Eric Litchfield, a spokesman for Cohn & Wolfe, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment... Peter Haddad, a researcher at Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K., was listed as the article’s lead author. [10]

Rebranding shyness as national disease problem

According to a story by Martha Rosenberg on AlterNet, Cohn & Wolfe is credited with rebranding shyness as a disease that requires medication with the drug Paxil:

Slick PR firm Cohn and Wolfe is credited with vaulting "shyness" to a national psychiatric problem, the answer for which is Paxil, and creating faux grassroots patient groups like Freedom From Fear to push their clients' drugs.[11]

Paxil is an antidepressant drug of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) type, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. It became controversial after a Wyoming, USA lawsuit in 2001 brought against GlaxoSmithKline. The jury decided that Paxil was implicated in a tragic case where a 60-year-old man, Donald Schell, shot and killed his wife, daughter and granddaughter and then himself after taking Paxil for only two days. The jury, assisted by the expert testimony of Dr David Healy, a well known critic of SSRIs, concluded that Paxil "can cause some people to become homicidal and/or suicidal." GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay the plaintiffs, members of Mr Schell's family, $8 million.[12]